Kara DioGuardi is “thrilled” about Ellen DeGeneres slipping in to fill Paula Abdul‘s chair at the American Idol judging table and recently opened up about how tough being the “new kid” was last season.

“I’m a huge Ellen DeGeneres fan, I think she’s going to bring so much to the show,” she told Sirius XM’s Larry Flick. “She’s somebody who loves music, she’s positive, she loves kids..she is somebody who has watched the show from the beginning, knows everything there is to know about American Idol and I think ultimately it’s going to be a great new energy.”

In the interview which hits the airwaves on Friday at 9:00 am ET, DioGuardi talks about how excited she is to “hang out” with the comedian.

“I’ve only met her once, I did the [Ellen] show, she was delightful. I would love…to say [to her] ‘this is great’..and let her know that I’m completely ecstatic.”

DioGuardi was even more candid when discussing her own Idol experience.

“It was pretty hellish.” She admitted. “I got slagged…it was difficult for them to accept the change. It was difficult for them to understand why somebody who nobody had ever heard of could kind of come out of nowhere and sit next to these iconic figures. You know, why was I there, what did I do to deserve to do to be there?”

She continued that many watchers were ignorant about her professional contributions which didn’t help their reticence to embrace her: “You know I could understand it, and I think to this day I don’t think people probably don’t still understand really what I’ve done in the music industry or….my achievements. And that’s OK …slowly they’ll learn, hopefully. Or they won’t. And it will just be easier this year because I’m not as fearful as I was last year…for someone who’s never been on live television it’s very, very challenging to go from the back of the studio to the number one TV show, and that kind of visibility. And it was very, very, very scary.”